Of Postman Pete and Prince Charming
24th October 2021
Well I've got the van..
...but not the cat. (I tend to react to them). Oh sorry, what's all this about now?
Well it's like this. For the first time in a while, I was able to allocate Monday to a quiet day trying to catch up on admin, instead of a silly o'clock start for some far flung reaches. Have I caught up at last? No. Too many interruptions and outstanding matters, but I made some headway. Tuesday however I was out again, and setting off about half-seven for Telford, I missed an e-mail at seven-twenty in the morning from Adam advising me that owing to a change of plan forced on him, it would not be him and Ian but Phil G joining me. I have nothing against Phil of course, I've known him several years, but if Phil is out alone that means ramp-building and all physical effort split between two, not three.
I drove in to the Telford Steam Railway yard about ten to ten, and found the Peckett 0-4-0ST 'Rocket' ready and waiting, as we had said our ETA would be 10.00. And exactly on time Phil arrived with the trailer and we set to work to get Rocket aboard.
With no Ian, any manual steering of the trailer (the rear wheel steering can be operated either by a pendant plugged in to the back or from a lever on the control panel on the neck) would fall to me and despite it being my trailer, I get little practice in. But despite this handicap Phil got turned round and set off on the prescribed route back to the M54 leaving me to get out of my boots and ovvies, try a sales pitch for The Railway to Merhead and get on the road to follow. But in my case I took the route through Dawley, and to my surprise must have overtaken Phil as he had stopped to straighten the trailer (after manual steering you have to set the wheels back absolutely in straight line or the trailer tries to crab).
A quick call revealed he planned to stop at Frankley services, so I pulled in ahead but he changed his mind and went on to Strensham (was it something I said?) but I did grab a shot of him passing...
...(don't blow it up, it's a bit fuzzy - didn't I just tell you not to?). At Strensham we had a cup of tea and a natter, and he returned to the wagon to find it ringed by curious bystanders in the lorry park. No matter, I was ahead all the way to Lydney, where Rocket was to take part in the DFR's deferred 50th anniversary celebration this weekend. Unloading at Lydney is conveniently alongside the road to the industrial estate and the main line station on a pad that belongs to the Dean Forest Diesel group. Indeed, if we jump back to July 2008 this was where Andrew's 03 was loaded when first acquired.
I found a single volunteer who showed me how to remove the chain-link fencing (and promise to put it back once I'd finished) and shortly after he'd left, Phil arrived, turned around and lined up so as to give smokebox-facing-Norchard as per their request. Another DFR member, on his way home from work, stopped to watch as we rolled Rocket down on to DFR rails and having got it there, pulled it forward a bit with the tractor unit (I'd have driven it but I couldn't find the Start button) clear of the ramp so we could reconnect. As daylight ebbed away we reassembled the fence and departed.
The DFR's Bookface page reported its arrival, with a tag line of 'Look what's the postman's brought'. A respondent commented that it was the first time he'd heard Pete Briddon being called a Postman. I get called a lot of things, but I grant you 'postman' isn't normally one of them.
After half an hour trying to find a hotel room at reasonable price in striking distance of Tyseley I decided that the best hotel was the Briddon Country Pile so returned home but made it to bed fairly early in order to be back up first thing. By about quarter to nine I had made it to the Tyseley Loco Works, to pick up another 0-4-0ST. Phil meanwhile had parked up around Gloucester overnight and had come north as far as the A41 where he pulled in to a layby to await my summons. Access to TLW for a low loader should be by swinging 45 degrees and straight across a generous corridor diagonally across the spacious car park to line up with a track coming off the turntable almost up to the inner gates. Two weeks ago that had worked fine, but the trouble with spacious car parks is that people think it's OK to park anywhere (I speak as a former Car Park professional at Chessington Zoo) and the corridor across was obstructed by a dozen or more vehicles. Nothing for it but to bring Phil up the side lane, swing in to the fuelling area and then back along the bottom of the car park and twist back so as to shuffle in to line with the track. That required me on steering again (I was getting in more practice than I'd had in ages) and despite nearly scraping a 35cwt Transit pick up we got lined up and loaded this little Hawthorn.
Oh, did I tell you it decided to rain most of the time? Loaded and starting away, Phil opted that I back it across to the fuelling point so that he could then swing out forwards up the lane. At this point the steering decided to stop working in one direction. I could turn the trailer to the left, but not back to the right. This has happened before, but as the problem goes away of its own accord, I suspect Adam has rather disbelieved Ian's claims. But without it working it was up to me to control it from the valve at the neck, and it's rather like the captain on the bridge at the back of a supertanker, except the neck and the loco means I can't actually see across to the leading left corner of the trailer, and you need a good judgement of distance as to when to start turning and how much. Fortunately it didn't tax me too hard to get it through the barrier into the fuelling area so that Phil could take over forwards up the exit lane
Our destination was Butterley once again, and I was able to get there well ahead of Phil, with sufficient time to frighten the life out of a solitary volunteer painting a dmu seat frame and make myself a tea.
It started raining again just as Phil rolled up but wth smart work the loco was off just as the MR's Barclay 0-4-0DH arrived again to convey it on to Swanwick.
I plugged in the umbilical and lo and behold the steering worked both ways on the trailer, thus we backed up onto the main road, Phil straightened it and set off back for Heanor's yard.
On Thursday I had the van booked in to rectify a suspect wheel bearing, and Friday found myself deputised to go collect grandson so not much to report until Saturday when once again we got back to the shed and proceded with various projects including the urgent repairs to the OBA wagon that I told you about last week. Here's a photo to show the stripped out floor, and the end bulkheads coming off in order to renew the rotten ply lining and cut out/weld in replacement pieces of plate corroded away.
Much of the flaking rust on the rear verticals and across the bottom was needle gunned and primed: I have to order up umpteen odd rectangles of plate this week to progress the repairs as we don't want the wagon here any longer than neccessary. Meanwhile I was learning the fallibility of my aged memory. A couple of years ago I installed a spring-apply/pressure release parking brake to a loco at Brush, and am repeating the exercise on another identical loco in the workshop. Picking upon 4 existing tapped holes around the gearbox inpot, I naturally needed longer bolts to retain the bracketry. My drawings confirmed that these were 5/8ths and I glanced at an extracted bolt and concluded they were UNF. Now, my normal practice is always to buy more than you need and thus build up a stock over time. But I could find no 5/8 UNF bolts of that length anywhere and had finally ordered half-a-dozen which had arrived during the week. But when I tried them, they didn't pick up. Comparing them to the old (shorter) bolts they were clearly different and I cursed myself for ordering UNF when it should have been UNC. But a solitary UNC bolt I had wouldn't screw in either. Back to first principles. Is it 5/8? Yes. What pitch is it? Locate thread gauge - it is 11 TPI. What thread has 11 teeth per inch on 5/8 diameter? You potty Peter, you, that's BSF. Go to 5/8BSF bin and there's a box of the right length bolts, ordered in excess last time, together with one whose head was cut off to act as a locating dowel and so make the assembly easier. I don't remember doing this, but clearly I have.
The weather today was alternately light rain and heavy rain, so work on the OBA was abandoned. I got to continue on the Alstom loco with its 'bang' tests, first power ups to see what lights and what doesn't and if anything goes bang. Nothing went up in smoke but a few things failed to light up which require further investigation.
Yesterday afternoon we had also extracted two lengths of bullhead rail about 14ft long and cut them each into 2 4ft6 lengths and whatever was left over, about 5ft. On a break in the rain these six pieces were sack-trucked up to the van and loaded, together with jacks, packing, and other sundry items. Andrew has acquired another loco, only this time he's gone and got one sat on timbers and that hasn't seen any rails under it for over 20 years. Like Sleeping Beauty it was hidden in undergrowth and like Prince Charming he has already had a visit or two to hack the foliage back. Tomorrow (yes, another silly o'clock Monday start) we're off to try and slide these rails under and hopefully confirm that it is ready for Adam to come and collect, as I've already set a date for it to be uplifted. What is it? Not telling: not this week anyway. Maybe this time next week, if you return. See ya then.